The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people
#19001
Mustafa Abdalla Mohamed Salih
#19012
Overall Influence
Mustafa Abdalla Mohamed Salih , , is a Sudanese academic professor, scientist and pediatric neurologist. He established the first pediatric neurology specialty in Sudan and is also one of the founders of the pediatric neurology specialty in Saudi Arabia. He identified inherited neurologic diseases which were subsequently named after him. Salih Myopathy, Salih ataxia, and Bosley-Salih-Alorainy syndrome resulting from mutations in HOXA1 gene. He is also known to have led a team of scientists who proved that the extract from broad beans also known as hoarse beans had the ability to cure epilepsy spasms.
Go to Profile#19002
Dev Anand
#19013
Overall Influence
1923 - 2011 (88 years)
Dev Anand was an Indian actor, writer, director and producer known for his work in Hindi cinema. Anand is considered as one of the greatest and most successful actors in the history of Indian cinema. Through a career that spanned over six decades, he worked in more than 100 films. Anand is a recipient of four Filmfare Awards, including two for Best Actor. The Government of India honored him with Padma Bhushan, Indian third highest civilian honour in 2001 and with Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2002.
Go to Profile#19003
Danielle Bassett
#19014
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Dani Smith Bassett is an American physicist and systems neuroscientist who was the youngest individual to be awarded a 2014 MacArthur fellowship. Bassett, whose pronouns are they/them, was also awarded a 2014 Sloan fellowship. They are currently the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor in the Departments of Bioengineering, Electrical & Systems Engineering, Physics & Astronomy, Neurology, and Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and an external professor of the Santa Fe Institute. Their work focuses on applying network science to the study of learning in the human brain in addition to the stu...
Go to Profile#19004
Neil Fligstein
#19015
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Neil Fligstein is an American sociologist and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his work in economic sociology, political sociology, and organizational theory. He has produced both empirical and theoretical works.
Go to Profile#19005
Eric H. Davidson
#19016
Overall Influence
1937 - 2015 (78 years)
Eric Harris Davidson was an American developmental biologist at the California Institute of Technology. Davidson was best known for his pioneering work on the role of gene regulation in evolution, on embryonic specification and for spearheading the effort to sequence the genome of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. He devoted a large part of his professional career to developing an understanding of embryogenesis at the genetic level. He wrote many academic works describing his work, including a textbook on early animal development.
Go to Profile#19006
Jean-Paul Delahaye
#19017
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jean-Paul Delahaye is a French computer scientist and mathematician. Career Delahaye has been a professor of computer science at the Lille University of Science and Technology since 1988 and a researcher in the school's computer sciences lab since 1983. Since 1991 he has written a monthly column in Pour la Science, the French version of Scientific American, dealing with mathematical games and recreations, logic, and computer science. He is a contributing author of the online scientific journal Interstices and a science and mathematics advisor to the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Go to Profile#19007
Michael Berridge
#19018
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Sir Michael John Berridge was a British physiologist and biochemist. Born and raised in Southern Rhodesia , he was best known for his work on cellular transmembrane signalling, in particular the discovery that inositol trisphosphate acts as a second messenger, linking events at the plasma membrane with the release of Ca2+ within the cell. , he was the Emeritus Babraham Fellow in the Signalling Programme Department of the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, and honorary professor of cell signalling at the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#19008
J. Rufus Fears
#19019
Overall Influence
1945 - 2012 (67 years)
Jesse Rufus Fears was an American historian, scholar, educator, and author writing on the subjects of Ancient history, The History of Liberty, and classical studies. He is best known for his many lectures for the Teaching Company.
Go to Profile#19009
David Sobel
#19020
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
David Sobel is an American educator and academic, responsible for developing the philosophy of place-based education. He has written extensively on the topic in books and numerous articles. He is currently a Core Faculty member and Director of Certificate Programs at Antioch University New England.
Go to Profile#19010
Rane Willerslev
#19021
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Rane Willerslev is a Danish anthropologist. In his academic career, he has travelled extensively and has a particular interest in primitive tribal cultures, both present and prehistoric. On 1 July 2017, he was appointed director of the National Museum of Denmark by Culture Minister Mette Bock.
Go to Profile#19011
Sarah Gilbert
#19022
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Dame Sarah Catherine Gilbert FRS is an English vaccinologist who is a Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford and co-founder of Vaccitech. She specialises in the development of vaccines against influenza and emerging viral pathogens. She led the development and testing of the universal flu vaccine, which underwent clinical trials in 2011.
Go to Profile#19012
Amber Case
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#19023
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Amber Case is an American cyborg anthropologist, user experience designer and public speaker. She studies the interaction between humans and technology. Biography Case was born in about 1986. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology from Lewis & Clark College in 2008, having written a thesis about cell phones. In 2008, she co-founded CyborgCamp, an unconference on the future of humans and computers.
Go to Profile#19013
George Mackay Brown
#19024
Overall Influence
1921 - 1996 (75 years)
George Mackay Brown was a Scottish poet, author and dramatist with a distinctly Orcadian character. He is widely regarded as one of the great Scottish poets of the 20th century. Biography Early life and career George Mackay Brown was born on 17 October 1921, the youngest of six children. His parents were John Brown, a tailor and postman, and Mhairi Mackay, a descendant of Clan Mackay who had been brought up in Braal, a hamlet near Strathy, Sutherland, as a native speaker of the Reay Country dialect of Scottish Gaelic.
Go to Profile#19014
Detlef Laugwitz
#19025
Overall Influence
1932 - 2000 (68 years)
Detlef Laugwitz was a German mathematician and historian, who worked in differential geometry, history of mathematics, functional analysis, and non-standard analysis. Biography He was born on 11 May 1932 in Breslau, Germany. Starting in 1949, he studied mathematics, physics, and philosophy at the Georg-August-University at Göttingen, where he received his doctorate in 1954. Until 1956 he worked in the Mathematical Research Institute of Oberwolfach. In 1958 he became a lecturer at the Technical University of Munich, where he obtained his Habilitation. In 1958 he moved to the Technical University of Darmstadt, where in 1962 he became a professor, and remained until his retirement.
Go to Profile#19015
Anil Jain
#19026
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
#19016
Melissa Etheridge
#19027
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Melissa Lou Etheridge is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and guitarist. Her eponymous debut album was released in 1988 and became an underground success. It peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard 200 and its lead single, "Bring Me Some Water", garnered Etheridge her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female in 1989. Her second album, Brave and Crazy, appeared that same year and earned Etheridge two more Grammy nominations. In 1992, Etheridge released her third album, Never Enough, and its lead single, "Ain't It Heavy", won Etheridge her first Grammy Award.
Go to Profile#19017
Bernard Holland
#19028
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Bernard Holland is an American music critic. He served on the staff of The New York Times from 1981 until 2008 and held the post of chief music critic from 1995, contributing 4,575 articles to the newspaper. He then became the National Music Critic, reviewing concerts, festivals and hall openings worldwide.
Go to Profile#19018
Hava Siegelmann
#19029
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Hava Siegelmann is an American computer scientist and Provost Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Biography Siegelmann earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Rutgers University under Eduardo Sontag. Her dissertation was on the topic of Hypercomputation. She earned an M.Sc. in Computer Science at Hebrew University and a B.A. in Computer Science at the Technion .
Go to Profile#19019
Alison J. Tierney
#19030
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Alison Joan Tierney FRCN is a British nursing theorist, nurse researcher and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Advanced Nursing. Tierney was one of the first graduates of the Integrated Degree/Nursing programme at The University of Edinburgh. In 2018 she was named as one of 70 of the most influential nurses in the 70 years of the NHS .
Go to Profile#19020
Thom Brennaman
#19031
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Thomas Wade Brennaman is an American television sportscaster. He is the son of former Cincinnati Reds radio sportscaster Marty Brennaman. He served as the television voice of the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1998 to 2006, and as the voice of the Cincinnati Reds from 2007 through 2020. His career with the Reds and Fox Sports ended abruptly when he was caught on a hot mic making a homophobic statement during a game broadcast. His on-air apology, in which he interrupted himself to call "a drive into deep left field by Castellanos", became an internet meme. Since leaving the Reds, he has served as a...
Go to Profile#19021
Elaine Jaffe
#19032
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Elaine Sarkin Jaffe is a senior National Cancer Institute investigator at the National Institutes of Health most well known for her contribution to hematopathology. She completed her medical education at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, receiving her M.D. degree from University of Pennsylvania in 1969. After an internship at Georgetown University she joined NCI as a resident in anatomic pathology, and has been a senior investigator since 1974, focusing on the classification and definition of lymphomas. Jaffe's early work helped to provide a deeper understanding of the origin of lymphomas, especially follicular lymphoma.
Go to Profile#19022
John Olsen
#19033
Overall Influence
1928 - 2023 (95 years)
John Henry Olsen AO OBE was an Australian artist and winner of the 2005 Archibald Prize. Olsen's primary subject of work was landscape. Early life and training John Olsen was born in Newcastle on 21 January 1928. He moved to Bondi Beach with his family in 1935 and began a lifelong fascination with Sydney Harbour. He attended St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill.
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Ralph Brazelton Peck
#19034
Overall Influence
1912 - 2008 (96 years)
Ralph Brazelton Peck was a civil engineer specializing in soil mechanics. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1976 "for his development of the science and art of subsurface engineering, combining the contributions of the sciences of geology and soil mechanics with the practical art of foundation design"?
Go to Profile#19024
Victor Vacquier
#19035
Overall Influence
1907 - 2009 (102 years)
Victor Vacquier, Sr. was a professor of geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Vacquier was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1920, Vacquier escaped the Russian Civil War with his family, taking a horse-drawn sleigh across the ice of the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki, then moving to France and to the United States. He received a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1927 from the University of Wisconsin, and a master's degree in physics in 1929, but never earned a Ph.D. He worked for Gulf Research Laboratories, the research arm of Gulf Oi...
Go to Profile#19025
Jeff Smith
#19036
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Jeff Smith is an American cartoonist. He is best known as the creator of the self-published comic book series Bone. Early life Jeff Smith was born in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania to William Earl Smith and Barbara Goodsell. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio.
Go to Profile#19026
Gerald M. Rubin
#19037
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Gerald Mayer Rubin is an American biologist, notable for pioneering the use of transposable P elements in genetics, and for leading the public project to sequence the Drosophila melanogaster genome. Related to his genomics work, Rubin's lab is notable for development of genetic and genomics tools and studies of signal transduction and gene regulation. Rubin also serves as a vice president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and executive director of the Janelia Research Campus.
Go to Profile#19027
Simon Standage
#19038
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Simon Andrew Thomas Standage is an English violinist and conductor best known for playing and conducting music of the baroque and classical eras on original instruments. Biography and career He studied music at King's College, Cambridge, following which he spent four years in the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra under Szymon Goldberg. He won a Harkness Fellowship to study with Ivan Galamian in New York City from 1967 to 1969.
Go to Profile#19028
Howard Waitzkin
#19039
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Howard Waitzkin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of New Mexico and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Illinois. Education and career Waitzkin grew up in a small town in northeastern Ohio. At an early age, tragedy in his low-income family spurred his interest in the relationships among oppression and inequality, public health, and medicine. Waitzkin received his MD and PhD in sociology from Harvard University in 1972. Over the course of his career, Waitzkin has practiced as a primary care physician in internal...
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Nikolaos Bourbakis
#19040
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Nikolaos G. Bourbakis is a Greek computer scientist known for his work in image processing. , he is Ohio Board of Regents Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and director of both the Information Technology Research Institute and the Assistive Technologies Research at Wright State University in Ohio, United States. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools.
Go to Profile#19030
Robert Chambers
#19041
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Robert John Haylock Chambers OBE is a British academic and development practitioner. He spent his academic career at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. In 2013 he became an honorary fellow of the International Institute of Social Studies.
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Cameron Diaz
#19042
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Cameron Michelle Diaz is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including nominations for four Golden Globe Awards and a British Academy Film Award. , her films have grossed over $3 billion in the U.S., making her the fifth-highest-grossing actress at the domestic box office. Diaz's roles in comedies and romances cemented her as a sex symbol and a bankable star, and she was named the highest-paid Hollywood actress over 40 in 2013.
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Elizabeth Peyton
#19043
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Elizabeth Joy Peyton is an American contemporary artist working primarily in painting, drawing, and printmaking. Best known for figures from her own life and those beyond it, including close friends, historical personae, and icons of contemporary culture, Peyton's portraits have regularly featured artists, writers, musicians, and actors.
Go to Profile#19033
Nathaniel Borenstein
#19044
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Nathaniel S. Borenstein is an American computer scientist. He is one of the original designers of the MIME protocol for formatting multimedia Internet electronic mail and sent the first e-mail attachment.
Go to Profile#19034
Yi Zhongtian
#19045
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Yi Zhongtian is a Chinese writer and historian. He is also a professor and Ph.D. supervisor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Xiamen University's School of Humanities. Life and career Yi's grandfather, Yi Silin , graduated from the Hunan Law School and served as the acting county magistrate of Dao County, Hunan Province. He became a self-taught physician after leaving office. Yi's uncle, Yi Rengai , graduated from Tsinghua University's Department of History in 1935. Yi's father, Yi Tingyuan , was an accountant.
Go to Profile#19035
R. Michael Rich
#19046
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Robert Michael Rich is an American astrophysicist. He obtained his B.A. at Pomona College in 1979 and earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1986 under thesis supervisor Jeremy R. Mould. He was a Carnegie Fellow at Carnegie/DTM until 1988 when he joined the faculty of Columbia University where he was the doctoral thesis adviser to Neil deGrasse Tyson, and is on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles.
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Marty Peretz
#19047
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Martin H. Peretz is an American former magazine publisher and educator. Formerly an assistant professor at Harvard University, he purchased The New Republic in 1974 and assumed editorial control shortly afterwards. He founded the financial news website TheStreet.com in 1996 with personality and hedge fund manager Jim Cramer. Peretz is known for his strong support of Israel as well as his approval of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. He retained majority ownership of The New Republic until 2002, when he sold a two-thirds stake in the magazine to two financiers. Peretz sold the remainder of his ...
Go to Profile#19037
Georgi Derluguian
#19048
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Georgi M. Derluguian , also tr. Georgy Derlugyan, is a sociologist and historian of Armenian, Russian and Ukrainian descent. His area of specialty is in ethnic violence, guerrilla movements and revolutions, particularly in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Africa, as well as post-Cold War globalization. He is currently a professor of Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi.
Go to Profile#19038
Laura Pausini
#19049
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Laura Pausini is an Italian singer. She rose to fame in 1993, winning the newcomer artists' section of the 43rd Sanremo Music Festival with her debut single "La solitudine", which became an Italian standard and an international hit. Her self-titled debut album was released in Italy on 23 April 1993 and later became an international success, selling two million copies worldwide. Its follow-up, Laura, was released in 1994 and confirmed her international success, selling three million copies worldwide.
Go to Profile#19039
Prabhakar Raghavan
#19050
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Prabhakar Raghavan is a senior vice president at Google, where he is responsible for Google Search, Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce, and Payments products. His research spans algorithms, web search and databases and he is the co-author of the textbooks Randomized Algorithms with Rajeev Motwani and Introduction to Information Retrieval.
Go to Profile#19040
Martin Raff
#19051
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Martin Charles Raff is a Canadian/British biologist and researcher who is an Emeritus Professor at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology at University College London . His research has been in immunology, cell biology, and developmental neurobiology.
Go to Profile#19041
Steven DeRose
#19052
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Steven J DeRose is a computer scientist noted for his contributions to Computational Linguistics and to key standards related to document processing, mostly around ISO's Standard Generalized Markup Language and W3C's Extensible Markup Language .
Go to Profile#19042
Vitaly Shevoroshkin
#19053
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Vitaly Victorovich Shevoroshkin is an American linguist of Russian origin, specializing in the study of ancient Mediterranean languages. Shevoroshkin was born in 1932 in Georgia . In the 1960s he tried to decipher Carian inscriptions and proved that their language belonged to the Anatolian languages. In the 1970s he emigrated to the United States. He is now a professor emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Linguistics at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#19043
Ernest L. Boyer
#19054
Overall Influence
1928 - 1995 (67 years)
Ernest LeRoy Boyer was an American educator who most notably served as Chancellor of the State University of New York, United States Commissioner of Education, and President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Boyer was recipient of numerous awards, including over 140 honorary doctorates.
Go to Profile#19044
Lamya Kaddor
#19055
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Lamya Kaddor is a German writer and scholar of Islamic studies of Syrian ancestry who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since the 2021 elections. She is the founder and chairwoman of the Liberal-Islamic Association and is known for introducing Islamic education into German public schools.
Go to Profile#19045
Marc Overmars
#19056
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Marc Overmars is a Dutch former professional footballer and former director of football at Belgian Pro League side Royal Antwerp FC. He was previously director of football at Ajax. During his football career, he played as a winger and was renowned for his speed and technical skills.
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François Grin
#19057
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
François Grin is a Swiss economist. One of his research fields is the economics of language. Grin studied economics at the University of Geneva, where he obtained a doctorate summa cum laude in 1989. He then was a teacher at the universities of Montreal and Washington , assistant professor at the University of Geneva and vice-director of the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany. Since 2001 he is a visiting professor at the University of Lugano, in 2003 he became professor at the University of Geneva.
Go to Profile#19047
Christopher Priest
#19058
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Christopher Priest is a British novelist and science fiction writer. His works include Fugue for a Darkening Island, The Inverted World, The Affirmation, The Glamour, The Prestige, and The Separation.
Go to Profile#19048
Charles M. Vest
#19059
Overall Influence
1941 - 2013 (72 years)
Charles "Chuck" Marstiller Vest was an American mechanical engineer and academic administrator. He served as President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from October 1990 until December 2004. He succeeded Paul Gray and was succeeded by Susan Hockfield. He served as president of the National Academy of Engineering from 2007 to 2013.
Go to Profile#19049
Rachael Padman
#19060
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Rachael Padman is an Australian physics lecturer at the University of Cambridge in England. From Melbourne, Padman was a graduate in electrical engineering from Monash University, Australia, and specialised in radio astronomy. After her doctoral research, she has made contributions to research in stellar evolution . She is now mainly involved in administrative works in teaching. Padman is a member of the International Astronomical Union.
Go to Profile#19050
C. Anthony Anderson
#19061
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Curtis Anthony Anderson is a contemporary American philosopher, currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from University of California at Los Angeles in 1977, where he worked closely with the renowned logician Alonzo Church. He also holds an M.S. in mathematics from the University of Houston , where he earned his undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics .
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